Arena District offers residents a sense of community

These are the places we call home -- the places where we raise our families, cook our meals and spend our lives. Not only have these places play a role in our individual histories, but they have also played a role in Columbus history. The Dispatch visits some of these communities and shares their stories.

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After a day of work at American Electric Power, Bill Thompson walked into the R Bar in the Arena
District last week for a cold one.

It wasn’t a hockey night, nor a concert night.

Just a beer in a neighborhood bar. Thompson lives four floors above R Bar in the Arena Crossing
apartments.

“I think you do get a residential vibe,” the 52-year-old said of the Arena District, where he
has lived for two years.

At the Condominiums at North Bank Park, Jenny Schneider has a 17th-floor view of Nationwide
Arena and the Downtown skyline.

“We watch what’s going on every day with the Scioto River,” she said of the project to narrow
the waterway. “Dump trucks look like toys.”

One renter, one owner — each residents of what is becoming an increasingly residential
neighborhood.

The 75-acre district of red-brick streets and buildings is home to more than 500 people, part of
the more than 6,600 Downtown residents.

If you include the development west of Neil Avenue, the number of Arena District residents
increases to 980, according to the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District. What people
think of as the Arena District is expanding along with the development of the area.

Its development as a residential neighborhood revealed the pent-up demand for Downtown living,
said Marc Conte, deputy director of research planning and facilities at the Capital Crossroads
Special Improvement District.

“I think it was very important,” Conte said. “It showed a lot of people that money could be made
on Downtown housing. Think about the Arena Crossing apartments. It was a runaway success when it
opened.”

Downtown will have arrived when it is thought of first as a residential neighborhood, said Brian
Ellis, the president of Nationwide Realty Investors, the district’s developer. “That’s what’s going
to make Downtown great.”

The Arena District rose from the old Ohio Penitentiary site. The penitentiary, surrounded by
imposing 24-foot stone walls, closed on Sept. 20, 1984.

For years, the 22-acre penitentiary site sat empty and deteriorating. On July 6, 1994, a 60-foot
section of the east wall collapsed, flattening two cars. In 1997, crews began to demolish the walls
and the buildings behind them.

Nationwide Arena opened in 2000. And the district’s first residential development — Arena
Crossing — opened in 2004.

Mike and Natalie Darr, co-owners of the R Bar and the nearby Three-Legged Mare, lived there for
two or three years, Mrs. Darr said.

“A lot of people who work Downtown live Downtown,” said Mr. Darr, 36, a Canton native who said
living in the district taught him a lot about urban living.

The couple, who have two young daughters and two dogs, moved to Harrison West in 2008.

At the Condominiums at North Bank Park, all but 18 of the 109 units have been sold since
Nationwide Realty began marketing them in 2007.

Schneider, a vice president of a construction-management firm, said residents hold monthly
book-club meetings and are planning a regular movie night. Friends walk to dinner.

“It’s very much a community,” said Schneider, who lives there with her husband, Karl, a lawyer;
their son Kevin, 24; and her 76-year-old mother, Betty Lou Furash.

Many of the district’s residents are young professionals and empty nesters.

Paul Thompson, the president of North Bank’s homeowners association, said he lived in the nearby
Burnham Square Condominiums before moving to North Bank more than five years ago.

“We had six Blue Jackets living in Burnham Square. It was kind of party central,” said Thompson,
65, a retired Nationwide vice president.

Several Blue Jackets players live at North Bank now.

Capitol Square Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dispatch Printing Company, is a minority
investor in the Arena District.

Ellis said Nationwide plans to develop more housing at the northeast corner of Spring Street and
Neil Avenue and at the former Jaeger Machine Co. site west of Huntington Park.

“The finishing touches of the Arena District are going to be critically important,” he said.